clean-shaven. He also showed his violent anger. The play is called
The Tempest
not because of a noisy first scene, but because peace and calm, inner and outer only come at the very end when Prospero has managed to overcome his anger, his wish for revenge and his need for power. Until then, deep in his nature he remains Antonio’s blood brother—the tempest is everywhere. As for emotions, the question is absurd. You don’t define them, you play them.
5. Prospero (John Gielgud) in command over a cowering Ariel (Brian Bedford) in Peter Brook’s production at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in 1957.
Mendes: When Ariel was finally released he vented his spleen on Prospero and famously, I suppose now, spat in his face. That was the most controversial aspect of the production, but it felt absolutely earned and justified in his reading of the role. It was quite exciting to be in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and to have people shout out. I watched a performance and two people shoutedout “Rubbish!” when he spat in his face. I rather liked it. It was an electric moment and it suddenly made you pity Prospero in a way that nothing else in the evening could have made you do. Suddenly he was the one who was lost. He has lost his powers and when he says, “Now my charms are all o’erthrown, / And what strength I have’s mine own, / Which is most faint,” it really meant something. He was talking in the moment. It didn’t seem preplanned. It seemed a response to what Ariel had just done to him. So to me that was a thrilling discovery. But it was entirely, as is often the case, due to a particular journey that I as the director and a group of actors had gone on. If I tried to impose it on another production, it wouldn’t work at all. It was an organic thing that emerged out of rehearsals.
Goold: Ariel only of release, a deep single sob of relief and annihilation. Prospero of confusion and sentiment—as one might release a treasured pet into the wild, hoping that he will look back but not really expecting it. This is all linked to the Act 5 reading I’ve outlined. Our Prospero wanted closure—with Miranda, Antonio, his magic, the island even—but life cannot be nicely stage-managed in the way he had hoped and once emotions were let in the ordered ending he had planned was in ruins.
What do you think was the hardest choice you had to make in creating your production of the play?
Brook: I can never understand this word “choice,” which recurs constantly in Actor’s Studio jargon. You certainly have to work hard and then in the end the choices make themselves by themselves.
Mendes: I think what is most difficult is how to realize the spiritual world. Unless you have a specific literal setting for the play, you have to render the spiritual world in a way that is convincing for a modern audience and feels real. The specter of people in lycra with floaty pastel colors and net curtains rushing around pretending to be fairies is the thing that haunted me and I wanted to avoid. But that is also the reason that you do it. You do it because you don’t have the answers to everything and because you are scared by the play and how impossible it appears. Those are the things that draw you to it. That’s why I do what I do.
6. Kananu Kirimi in Michael Boyd’s production.
7. Julian Bleach as Ariel in Rupert Goold’s Arctic-set 2006 RSC production, designed by Giles Cadle, with costumes by Nicky Gillibrand.
8. Bakary Sangaré as Ariel in
La Tempête
, directed by Peter Brook.
Goold: Before we started the preproduction I went to see John Barton to get some insight—this was my first RSC Shakespeare and I figured I’d need all the help I could get. John told me the play was poor, one of Shakespeare’s worst. That it could be done only two ways; either in the manner of Peter Brook, spare and ritualized, or as a big show with lots of effects and magic. He said the former never worked because it was just too portentous and
The Tempest
not because of a noisy first scene, but because peace and calm, inner and outer only come at the very end when Prospero has managed to overcome his anger, his wish for revenge and his need for power. Until then, deep in his nature he remains Antonio’s blood brother—the tempest is everywhere. As for emotions, the question is absurd. You don’t define them, you play them.
5. Prospero (John Gielgud) in command over a cowering Ariel (Brian Bedford) in Peter Brook’s production at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in 1957.
Mendes: When Ariel was finally released he vented his spleen on Prospero and famously, I suppose now, spat in his face. That was the most controversial aspect of the production, but it felt absolutely earned and justified in his reading of the role. It was quite exciting to be in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and to have people shout out. I watched a performance and two people shoutedout “Rubbish!” when he spat in his face. I rather liked it. It was an electric moment and it suddenly made you pity Prospero in a way that nothing else in the evening could have made you do. Suddenly he was the one who was lost. He has lost his powers and when he says, “Now my charms are all o’erthrown, / And what strength I have’s mine own, / Which is most faint,” it really meant something. He was talking in the moment. It didn’t seem preplanned. It seemed a response to what Ariel had just done to him. So to me that was a thrilling discovery. But it was entirely, as is often the case, due to a particular journey that I as the director and a group of actors had gone on. If I tried to impose it on another production, it wouldn’t work at all. It was an organic thing that emerged out of rehearsals.
Goold: Ariel only of release, a deep single sob of relief and annihilation. Prospero of confusion and sentiment—as one might release a treasured pet into the wild, hoping that he will look back but not really expecting it. This is all linked to the Act 5 reading I’ve outlined. Our Prospero wanted closure—with Miranda, Antonio, his magic, the island even—but life cannot be nicely stage-managed in the way he had hoped and once emotions were let in the ordered ending he had planned was in ruins.
What do you think was the hardest choice you had to make in creating your production of the play?
Brook: I can never understand this word “choice,” which recurs constantly in Actor’s Studio jargon. You certainly have to work hard and then in the end the choices make themselves by themselves.
Mendes: I think what is most difficult is how to realize the spiritual world. Unless you have a specific literal setting for the play, you have to render the spiritual world in a way that is convincing for a modern audience and feels real. The specter of people in lycra with floaty pastel colors and net curtains rushing around pretending to be fairies is the thing that haunted me and I wanted to avoid. But that is also the reason that you do it. You do it because you don’t have the answers to everything and because you are scared by the play and how impossible it appears. Those are the things that draw you to it. That’s why I do what I do.
6. Kananu Kirimi in Michael Boyd’s production.
7. Julian Bleach as Ariel in Rupert Goold’s Arctic-set 2006 RSC production, designed by Giles Cadle, with costumes by Nicky Gillibrand.
8. Bakary Sangaré as Ariel in
La Tempête
, directed by Peter Brook.
Goold: Before we started the preproduction I went to see John Barton to get some insight—this was my first RSC Shakespeare and I figured I’d need all the help I could get. John told me the play was poor, one of Shakespeare’s worst. That it could be done only two ways; either in the manner of Peter Brook, spare and ritualized, or as a big show with lots of effects and magic. He said the former never worked because it was just too portentous and
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